19 Things Only Restructured Journalists Will Get

When people want you to be objective and unbiased, but also nail the bastards, but also not be belligerent.

When you speak truth to power, and power ignores you, and people blame you for not making an impact.

When you realise you're just reporting on how well politicians are doing politics and how you reckon people will react to that, and you really hope someone else is onto the whole 'what actual effect these policies will have in the real world' thing.

When you remember the person who would be doing that got fired and works in PR now.

And then you wonder if you're ultimately just doing PR, but for much less money.

When you do so much he said/she said reporting that you begin to doubt the existence of a verifiable universe and you would say something about Plato's Cave or logical positivism but your boss is not an arts graduate.

When they find out you can do division and you get all the hard stats stories.

When your company tries to run a Buzzfeed-style website but the world is now full of Buzzfeed-style websites and your company doesn't understand how Buzzfeed works.

When you have enough followers on Twitter that there's always at least one who feels strongly enough about whatever you say that they won't shut up about it.

Or when you get the same thing just because you're a woman with an opinion on the Internet.

That thing where comment is free, in the sense that the columnists don't get paid.

That thing where comment is fact-free and facts are scared.

But remember, even when the most hard-hitting story you did this week was cross-promotion for a reality TV show…

…and the second most hard-hitting story was a rewritten press release about the social media reaction to some celebrity gossip…

…and the symbiotic relationship between the Prime Minister and mass media light entertainment is slowly sucking what used to be a democratic function out of the veins of your industry…